Meet ‘Nollywood': The second largest movie industry in the world

In 1992, in Nigeria, electronics salesman Kenneth Nnebue shot a straight-to-video movie in one month, on a budget of just $12,000. Living in Bondagesold more than a million copies, mostly by street vendors, and Nollywood – Nigeria’s movie industry – was born.

By 2009, Nollywood had surpassed Hollywood as the world’s second largest movie industry by volume, right behind India’s Bollywood. And in 2014, the Nigerian government released data for the first time showing Nollywood is a $3.3 billion sector, with 1844 movies produced in 2013 alone. Earlier this year, Nollywood Producer Kunle Afolyan reached an exclusive Netflix distribution arrangement for his latest film, October 1. This adds to the 10 Nollywood related titles already on Netflix and the U.S. media company’s recent $12 million movie rights purchase of Nigerian novel Beasts of No Nation, to star Idris Elba.

And many observers believe that the global reach of African films could take off, led by video on demand (VOD) platforms and productions of Nigeria — the continent’s largest economy and most populous nation.

“Nollywood’s popularity across Africa and the diaspora certainly demonstrates the capacity of the films to travel,” said Nigerian film producer and financier Yewande Sadiku.

But, she notes industry is “in desperate need of a financial makeover.” Indeed, pirating of Nollywood productions is a big problem in Nigeria and throughout Africa. Nigeria’s film regulatory agency now posts existing laws, enforcement actions, and arrest details for film copyright infringement online, but many in the industry, including Nollywood producer Kunle Afolayan, say that’s not enough. They’ve pressed for stronger copyright laws and led a campaign to expose violators, including posting photos and films of alleged pirating operations.

And critics note that while Nollywood has volume, it lacks production value, and African actors have yet to breakout globally. “The truth is key players in the global movie industry still have little idea what Nollywood is about,” said Nigerian producer Kunle Afolayan. “The volume won’t matter until we can connect the art to the money with better content and profits.”

Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics data also highlights Nollywood’s greatest shortcoming: severe revenue bleed. Of the industry’s $3 billion valuation less than 1 percent was tracked from official ticket sales and royalties. The rest came from pirated reproductions sold by unauthorized vendors for roughly $2 each. As a result, producers and financiers see only a fraction of the movie industry’s economic value.

African digital content startups and the entry of subscription-based video on demand are trying to change this equation. With financial backing of $25 million from firms such as New York’s Tiger Global and Sweden’s , iROKO Partners licenses and streams Nollywood content to global subscribers, who pay $1.50 a month. “The focus is to take this popular movie industry, digitize it, and put the right framework around it to capture the proper value,” founder Jason Njoku said of Nollywood and iROKO’s platform.

“The revenue is already there, it’s just scattered. If stakeholders can invest in Nollywood and make back profits, it will lead to larger budgets and better quality content.”

Competition in African digital entertainment is heating up. In 2014, Africa Magic, a Naspers owned South African satellite TV channel, announced its $8 a month Africa Magic Go VOD package. Then there’s Kenyan startup Buni.tv’s new Buni+, a $5 a month streaming movie service. Each has a heavy focus on consumers of Nigerian content. Meanwhile, YouTube is also becoming a competitor. Taking a cue from U.S. disruptors like Netflix, Africa’s digital film platforms are already creating proprietary programming. iROKOTV is now directing its own productions through its ROK Studios. So too is Nairobi based Buni.tv, which launched Ogas at The Top, a Nigerian version of its popular political satire XYZ Show. In April Nigerian media outlet TechCabal reported a distribution partnership between IROKOTV and Netflix. But, neither Njoku nor Netflix would confirm or deny any deal to Fortune.

Reliable Internet–a baseline for streaming VOD–is still a problem in African countries, however. IROKO has set its developers to creating smaller Nollywood movie files and more direct download options. Another Nigerian startup, SOLO, is bridging the device and broadband gap by offering entry level smartphones (around $75) and its View App that allows customers to buy and rent digital content at download hotspots throughout the country.

As Africa’s VOD platforms improve prospects for the continent’s films by formalizing revenue and distribution streams, Nollywood may not be the only industry to profit. U.S. digital content purveyors could benefit too. “If we can solve these monetization challenges for African creative content, it can apply to any creative content,” said Jason Njoku.

Jake Bright is a Whitehead Fellow of The Foreign Policy Association and author of the upcoming book, The Next Africa: An Emerging Continent Becomes a Global Powerhouse.

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously said that Nollywood first surpassed Hollywood in volume in 2014; it reached that marker in 2009. The Nollywood industry’s first official valuation was made in 2014. The story has been updated to reflect this.

Big fat Indian weddings get bigger and fatter

When Pinky Rangi got married in 1978, nearly a thousand people gathered in her parents’ five-bedroom house in Long Island.

There were no wedding halls large enough to accommodate the number of guests that’s requisite for a big, splashy Indian wedding. There were no Indian caterers, so Rangi’s mother did all the cooking, using spices the family had brought over during trips back to India. There were no DJs well-versed in Bollywood, so the women sang and played tapes. Rangi’s father asked a friend to provide a racehorse for the baraat, the groom’s procession.

At that point, Rangi says her family was among only a handful of Indians in America. Her father emigrated to the U.S. in 1964 to open the Indian office at the World Fair.

But today, Rangi is helping her son Karan plan his big day. They considered a destination wedding in Greece or Turkey, but finally decided New York City would be more convenient for family members. Rangi is worried about the table settings and trimming the guest list. But she has a plethora of vendors to choose from, and the venues are all familiar with the ins and outs of Indian weddings, from the ceremonial fire to the horse for the baraat.

The Indian wedding industry in America is booming. Professor Devesh Kapur, director of University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India, points out that the Indian community in the U.S. has grown enormously over the past few years. Members of the second generation want to combine Indian and American wedding traditions, which results in what he calls “the big fat Indian” wedding.

Pinky Rangi and her family were the forerunners of the Indian immigration wave. A 1924 act banned immigration from Asia, including India, to “preserve the ideal of American homogeneity,” according to the Department of State’s Office of the Historian.

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act lifted this ban, but the barrier to entry was high. Indian immigrants had to be well educated to qualify for a green card. Still, thousands of middle-class Indians poured in, driven away by India’s mounting economic problems and lured by America’s educational and professional opportunities, Kapur says. The next wave of Indian immigrants in the 1990s came on H-1B visas, which require that applicants have a master’s degree.

Today, the children of these immigrants are in their 20s and 30s. Their average income is $88,000, compared to the overall American average of $50,000, according to the Pew Research Center. They are young; they are in love; they have money to spend. They also sit at the juncture of two cultures that fetishize weddings: American bridezillas and Indian Bollywood.

The average American wedding costs $29,000 and has 140 guests, according to TheKnot.com. The average cost of an Indian wedding in the U.S. is $65,000 with 500 guests, says Ruchir Mewawala, a wedding planner who specializes in Indian ceremonies. While hard data on the size of the Indian wedding industry is not easy to come by, he estimates that it’s a $4 billion to $5 billion business and that is outpacing India’s own industry, which is growing at about 25% to 30% a year.

Sunita Sadhnani, a wedding planner who does high-end events, pegs the average cost at $200,000. A typical Indian wedding has at least four events and requires 15 to 20 vendors. By comparison, an average American wedding normally consists of a ceremony and reception requiring four to seven vendors.

Indian wedding ceremonies vary, and the rising number of mixed marriages has led to fusion ceremonies. However, a typical (if there is such a thing) Indian wedding in the U.S. usually includes four events. During the ladies sangeet, female relatives sing to the bride. Then the bride is decorated with henna during the mehndi ceremony. For the wedding, the groom rides to the venue on a horse or an elephant in a processional called the baraat. For Hindu weddings, vows are said over an open flame. Everything wraps up with a reception.

In the past, some of the features of Indian weddings—say, an open flame, or the presence of an elephant or horse—tripped up venue owners. Now, that’s old hat in major metropolitan areas, where Indian populations are concentrated. Allan Kurtz, managing director of Gotham Hall, a favorite venue for Indian weddings in New York, says live animals didn’t faze him, but the flame gave him some unease. “It was a concern originally, because if you’ve never seen it, you envision a barn fire,” he says. Now, he just gets an open-flame permit. “It’s like having a large candle,” he adds.

The challenge for brides and grooms now isn’t throwing an Indian wedding—it’s about creating a unique one. Twenty years ago, Marc Schumacher launched Equishare Baraat Horses, which provides decorated horse for baraats. “The groom used to arrive in a limo and get on the horse and ride it to the venue,” he said. “Now, I lead the horse to a pier and the groom arrives by boat. Or I go to an open field and the groom arrives in a helicopter, or parachutes in.”

The biggest trend is destination weddings. Mewawala spends a good part of his year traveling to Mexico, where there’s a thriving industry for North American Indian weddings. In Cancún, there are vendors who provide white horses dressed up for the baraat. While some families still fly out priests, caterers, and DJs, there’s a healthy supply of options in Mexico, including a Sikh priest in Mexico City.

Destination Indian weddings can ease some of the expense. Jessel Taank, 31, is the public relations director for HL Group in Los Angeles. She started planning a destination wedding in Mexico after she found the cost in California prohibitive—$80,000 for just the reception. Now she’s budgeting $100,000 for a four-day extravaganza in Mexico. Highlights include the groom arriving on jet skis and a reception in a cave at Xcaret Park, a Mayan archeological site.

Yet there’s an irony to all the pomp and circumstance. While some of the brides and grooms are well-versed in the traditions, others know very little about Indian weddings and find themselves the central characters in a lavish event they don’t understand.

Still, many can’t imagine doing anything differently. Ruchir Patel got his lawyer involved when his venue wouldn’t let him bring in an elephant. Patel had a mostly American crowd of friends and says he knew little about Indian weddings, despite attending his cousins’ as a child. “I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he says. “I always wanted to be part of that. I always wanted that for myself.”